Chana Porter is a novelist, playwright, teacher, MacDowell fellow, and cofounder of The Octavia Project, a STEM and writing program for girls and trans and nonbinary youth that uses speculative fiction to envision greater possibilities for our world.

Her debut novel The Seep was an ABA Indie Next Pick, Open Letters Best Science Fiction, Fantasy Book of 2020, a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and a Times (UK) Best Sci-fi Book of 2021. Her most recent novel, The Thick and The Lean, was an Amazon Editor’s Pick, Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and named Best Sci-Fi of 2023 by The Times.

“How lucky we are to have Chana Porter”—China Miéville

As a playwright, her work has been produced and developed at New Georges, Playwrights Horizons, Cherry Lane, Dixon Place, Target Margin, and many more. She was writer-in-residence at The Catastrophe Theatre in Houston, Texas from 2017-2019. Chana is currently adapting Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed into an opera with the two-time GRAMMY and Pulitzer finalist Ted Hearne for the award-winning Los Angeles based ensemble WILD UP.

She lives in Los Angeles. Pronouns: she/they

As an educator, Chana has taught courses in playwriting and fiction at University of Houston, Fordham University, Sarah Lawrence, and many more institutions. Chana has designed courses of various lengths (an hour, a day, several weeks) which use somatic writing exercises to enable the student to write surprising new work with speed and clarity.

Interested in having Chana come to your classroom as a guest artist? Fill out the form on her contact page.